LEXINGTON (KY)
Lexington Herald Leader [Lexington KY]
April 15, 2022
By Sharon Donohue
I have a hot news flash for my brothers and sisters here in the Bible Belt: The individuals you should be concerned about do not include the recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice; rather, they are the people sitting next to you.
I speak as a former editor for two Christianity Today publications and for Moody Monthly, a Christian family magazine. As a young editor fresh out of college, I urged Moody Monthly to do a cover feature on child sexual abuse in the church.
At that time, mid-1980s, no one was talking about this publicly. But I had a hunch predatory sexual abuse was happening far more than we realized, in “good church families,” and that the perpetrators were fathers, uncles, brothers, and others who often held trusted positions of authority in the church—deacons, elders, religious teachers, and pastors.
My hunch proved right. I was editor of the Letters department, and never had we gotten that many letters over a single issue. I read every one of them. There were some days that I had to walk out of my office and find a vacant room on another floor, so I could pour out my heart in grief for those victims.
Shortly after we ran that feature, Oprah Winfrey (who was also Chicago based), announced that she had been sexually abused as a child.
In the years since then, I have occasionally mentioned that cover feature in casual conversation with women. In each instance, their intense interest told me I had given them a lifeline. They went on to reveal that they were sexually abused by a trusted adult in their childhood, usually a family member, often a father.
I have not been a victim of sexual abuse, but people close to me have. This week I learned that a man I regarded as my surrogate father, my pastor when I was growing up, had recently passed away. I was in college when he was dismissed from his ministry, when I learned that he was a pedophile. He had preyed upon boys in our Bible camps and church constituency. Memories of him, the shock of what he had done, was the impetus that prompted me to push a major religious magazine to deal with this issue.
As the editor who spearheaded that turning point publication, I learned a lot. First, sexual abuse of children is more prevalent than people realize, as rampant in the Protestant/Evangelical denominations as it has been in the Catholic Church. To its credit, the Catholic Church is owning up to this and trying to deal with it, thanks to the leadership of Pope Francis. In Protestant Christianity, there is no single hierarchical structure to address this. But the issue must be dealt with, and that is where we all play a part.
The second thing I learned is that people who do not want to think ill of trusted spiritual leaders are quick to protect the perpetrator instead of the victim. Young girls and boys are afraid to speak out, not only because of the threats of their abuser, but also because they fear no one will believe them. They need advocates, people like you and me, to stand up and protect them.
So how do we protect them? We listen, we believe them. We contact appropriate authorities who will stop the abuse and the abuser. And we recognize when opportunistic people are falsely and perniciously demonizing decent human beings (like Ketanji Brown Jackson) for the sake of political gain.
April is National Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Month. As we walk through Holy Week, may we all do some soul searching. Anyone who reads this piece is either a victim of sexual abuse, a perpetrator disguised as a good guy, or an individual who has the capacity to stand with victims as an agent of support and healing, as our brother’s and sister’s true keeper.
Sharon Donohue, former editor of Today’s Christian Woman, lives in Lexington, Kentucky, and is author of The Bible Clicks, a Creative Through the Bible Series, Book One (Stories of Faith, Vision. and Courage from the Old Testament) and Book Two (Stories of Faith, Hope, and Love from the New Testament). She can be reached at SDonohue@TheBibleClicks.com/.